


Risk Assessment

by thisiszircon



Series: The Moment of Awakening [8]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 10:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10989366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiszircon/pseuds/thisiszircon
Summary: Forced into an uncomfortable honesty, Ace tries to work out what to do next.  She needs the answers to certain questions.  Unfortunately, they are the questions she can't risk asking.





	Risk Assessment

**Author's Note:**

> With grateful thanks to my invaluable beta-reader and editor, [Nemo the Everbeing](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemo_the_Everbeing)
> 
> ~~~
> 
> Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
> 
> 'The Scientist Speculates'  
> Albert von Szent-Györgyi

No more excuses.

No more justifications.

Just honesty.

Ace loved the way the Doctor couldn't put his hat on or take it off without a flourish.  She loved every line on his face, especially – for some reason – the crease beneath his lower lip that defined his chin.  She loved the way his eyebrows sometimes went off on a strange angle to do their own thing.  She loved the timbre of his voice, the unnecessary roll of those 'r's, the way his vocal delivery could spin on a ha'penny from cheerful enthusiasm to dark, introspective musing.  The way his eyes would shift their colour to match his mood: deep-ocean blue to gunmetal grey and back again.

And yes, it was complicated and difficult and hardly made her life easier or better, but there it was.  She loved.  She wanted.  And Ace had no idea what to do about it.

She sat cross-legged on her bed and stared at the pages of her notebook.  The column she'd established in order to keep track of touching between her and the Doctor was primly titled 'Proximity', mainly because the word sounded a bit scientific.  Less like, _'Dear diary, I passed him a cup of tea this morning and he brushed my hand and oh-my-god our fingers made a spark!'_   And since the events recorded here tended not to be about random finger-sparkage but ran more along the lines of _, 'Dear diary, today I was chucked into a big insect cocoon thing with the Doctor and we were all smushed together and had a massive argument about the size of my boots,'_ the choice seemed fair enough.

(Of course, that particular event had also scored in the next column along: this one titled 'Conflict' because 'Bickering' would have sounded petty.  Though Ace would concede 'Bickering' might have been more accurate.)

The bundles of marks now recorded beneath each of her columns had grown so numerous and so familiar that they seemed to dance before her eyes.  This always happened if she stared long enough.  It was like that weird 3D picture Shou Yuing had shown her, where if you looked at it in the right way a new image sprang out.  Ace was, however, still waiting for the revelation that was hidden in her notes.

Small wonder that her latest dream – of grass and gazebos and gratuitous honesty – had happened after Colonis.  She only had to look at what that adventure had done to her notebook.  So many new marks, not to mention the entire new columns she'd needed to add.  And what did she have now?

She had a statistical record for certain aspects of her life with the Doctor.

She had three summaries of erotic dreams.

She had a nearly-complete journal of the events on Colonis, which made it clearer with every new paragraph that Dorothy McShane was, frankly, an imbecile of the highest order when it came to her personal life.

Did any of it help?

Of course it didn't.  Ace sighed and fell back on her bed.  She closed her eyes and tossed an arm over her face, aware that there was a childish part of her that was trying to hide from the otherwise empty room.

She had lots and lots of unanswered questions.  Maybe unanswer _able_ questions.  Like this one: why him?  He was not just an older man; he was well on the way to being ancient.  And he was not conventionally attractive.  Oh yeah, and he wasn't even fucking human.  So what kind of sensible choice was that?

And even if she was able, somehow, to brush aside the not-exactly-trivial age and race differences, perhaps _more_ worrying when it came to the 'Why him?' issue was this:

The Doctor had dumped her on a dangerous alien world – a world where history dictated she was going to _die_ – and then he'd buggered off.  Simply put: the Doctor was a man capable of treating her that way.

That had to factor into any character-assessment, didn't it?

And okay, so he'd explained why he'd done what he did and it sort of made sense.  But a lingering awareness remained of the Doctor's capacity for manipulation and deceit, of his tendency to consider the big picture at the expense of all the details: those living, breathing, _precious_ details that mattered too.

So why him?  In a universe of choices, why obsess over the romantic potential of a short, crumpled, much-much- _much_ older bloke whose morality was as alien to her as his anatomy might turn out to be?  Was it simply the fact that he was the one constant companion she had?  Was it a case of no-other-option?  Or simple convenience?

Ace frowned at the underside of her arm (since it was the nearest thing to her forehead) and she tried to be as honest as she could with herself.

No.  No, it wasn't that at all.

This was vexing, because 'no-other-option' would have been a nice, easy excuse for her obsessive behaviour.  But she'd already told herself: 'No more excuses.'  And she'd certainly had enough in the way of sexual encounters to know that there were always other choices.

Of course, if she really wanted to move on from this, there were the life-changing choices as well.  She could, for instance, leave the TARDIS and do something else.  Would it be so unthinkable?  Her time on Colonis had demonstrated that she was capable of managing on her own.  She'd found a role, made some friends.  That had to be a positive thing.

Except...

Well, frankly, the idea of leaving the TARDIS filled her with a cold, hollow kind of loneliness.  And it wasn't about leaving the ship – though admittedly she loved the TARDIS like a friend – or about leaving this life of travel and adventure – though admittedly it suited her.  It wasn't even about the scariness of moving on with her life and taking the responsibility for defining something new.

It was about him.  It was about walking away and not looking back and knowing that she would never see him again.  Ever.  _That_ notion chilled her to the bone.  Every time she made herself think about it, she had to clutch at herself to stop shivering.

So she knew, full well, that she'd subject herself to the Doctor's secrets and plots, and the way he would sacrifice pawns to protect the queen, and the way it might turn out, one day, that _she_ was the pawn he needed to sacrifice.  And she'd do it readily, because none of that was quite so bad as the idea of letting him go.

What that said about Dorothy McShane was something she didn't want to examine too closely.

All these thoughts about whether the Doctor was worthy of her sincerest feelings led Ace, rather unfortunately, to yet another conundrum.  And in the light of all that had so recently happened on Colonis, she had to admit that this one was just as unfathomable as the others.

Okay, so she loved and she wanted.  Fine.

But what the hell was there in Dorothy McShane to prompt loving and wanting in someone else?

~~~

Ace leaned against the counter in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil.  Not for the first time, she considered the possibility of getting herself a kettle for her quarters.  Like a hotel room.  Tea and coffee making facilities: that was how they advertised it, right?  Seemed like the kind of thing a futuristic space-and-time ship ought to be able to provide.

She hated being away from the privacy of her quarters, hated this sense of exposure, but she had to eat and drink.  Three days had passed since she'd left Colonis.  She and the Doctor hadn't really crossed paths in that time.  They often did this after a traumatic event: avoided each other for a while, both of them pretending it wasn't deliberate, merely coincidence.  They needed to take the time to get their heads on straight again.  (At least, that was what Ace needed to do.  Hard to be certain that her ancient and enigmatic and very, _very_ alien housemate was motivated by the same thing.)

The kettle was really taking its time today.  Her fault, maybe, for preferring the kitchen that looked as if it sort of belonged on late twentieth century Earth.  She should have used one of the other nine kitchens that she knew about; at least three of them had instant boiling water.  She'd only come here out of habit.

Sometimes she wondered about this kitchen.  The Doctor had obviously configured it with someone from Earth in mind.  Was it Mel?  Or someone else?  Ace didn't like to ask about her predecessors, in spite of all the signs and clues that were littered throughout the TARDIS, proving that other people had once been as much at home here as Ace now was.  When the Doctor was such a unique individual in her life, it was always a little discomforting to face the fact that she was one of many.

Outside in the passageway, Ace heard footsteps.  And humming.  She closed her eyes in resignation and then drew her shoulders back.  If it was finally time to start interacting again, to pretend nothing scary and emotional had just happened, then fine.  It had to start at some point, didn't it?

She was holding her breath.  This was not the relaxed and nonchalant body language she wanted to offer the Doctor.  She sighed the breath out and then bit briefly at her lip.

She listened.  But the footsteps had stopped.

A moment, then they started up again.  Hesitant.  Definitely not relaxed and nonchalant, if you could read such things into footsteps.  They grew louder.  For a moment, Ace had wondered whether the Doctor had heard her sigh and suddenly remembered he had a pressing engagement on the other side of the ship.

She looked at the half-open doorway.  Her heart was beating too fast.  The Doctor appeared in the sliver of passageway that was visible, and he glanced into the kitchen with what looked like casual disinterest.

"Morning," he called, as if automatically, then he was past the doorway and his footsteps were receding.

And that was that.  Ace's heart slowed down to a more sensible rhythm.

"Morning," Ace muttered.  (She'd just eaten a supper of a microwaved baked potato and some beans, and she'd be taking herself off to bed with this cup of tea when the kettle finally bothered its arse to boil.  But if the Doctor wanted it to be morning, then morning it was.  He was the Time Lord, after all.)

It seemed as if their post-trauma head-straightening measures would be in place for a few more days.  Everything grew quiet.  She frowned at the doorway, then looked back at the counter.

"Oh," she said.

She reached to switch the kettle on.  Yeah, that would probably help.

~~~

Ace started thinking about game theory.

(She'd been doing a lot of thinking.  It was one of the drawbacks to these days of post-trauma solitude: no one to talk to but herself.)

The first time Ace had encountered the words 'game theory' she'd been fourteen years old.  Back in those barely-real days of Perivale Comprehensive, Ace had taken an O level course in computer science.  She'd chosen it because of the timetable implications: Computer Studies was scheduled to overlap with the first half hour of Games on Wednesday afternoons, and Ace had hated Games with a passion.  Thanks to Computer Studies, the ritual humiliation of netball and the bruising punishment of hockey had been kept to a minimum in her school life.

Given this rather cynical motivation, Ace had been surprised to find herself enjoying the subject.  Back then she didn't have a computer at home, but Julian had an Acorn Electron and she was over at his house as often as she was in her own.  And Miss Birkett had been that rarest of things to be found in a mid-eighties inner-city high school: a talented, dedicated and inspiring teacher.

Miss Birkett had covered all kinds of things in her lessons: logic, human-computer interaction, even philosophy.  One memorable lesson had been taken up with a lively discussion about artificial intelligence.  Ace had never forgotten that lesson, and not only because it had been so weird to find herself joining in.  She remembered how Timothy Grainger – a small kid in the fourth form who wore those NHS spectacles with the blue acetate frames, and had a prominent purple birthmark on his cheek, and who faced the world with a permanent expression of wary resignation – had tentatively mentioned Isaac Asimov.  Two of the other kids in the class had begun the usual round of "sci-fi nerd" taunts.  Miss Birkett had held up one hand, shot the taunters a look, and the voices had fallen quiet.

Miss Birkett had then begun to discuss Asimov with Timothy, and the conversation had developed from there.  Ace remembered this vividly because after the lesson, when they were all trooping over to the Games block, she'd seen Timothy trying to wipe tears away as he bustled along.  And they were _good_ tears.  Ace had pretended not to notice, even when Timothy had sent her a panicked look that anticipated ridicule, but it had struck her that this was probably the first time Tim Grainger had wept on the school grounds without being kicked and insulted first.

Funny, the memories that stayed with you.

It was in Miss Birkett's lessons that Ace had been introduced to the concept of game theory.  Ace had been intrigued.  She'd learned that in virtually any context decision-making could be represented in a diagram, even assigned a value of probability.  Miss Birkett had gone through some examples.  Situations that Ace might have considered too mundane, or abstract, or too stuffed full of messy human emotions to lend themselves to scientific analysis: all had been condensed and explored on Miss Birkett's blackboard.

That lesson had been a real eye-opener, although Ace's fascination had been unsurprising, considering all that was happening at that time in her life:

Her best friend had died nine months earlier, after six days spent fighting for her life in hospital following a firebomb attack that had killed her mother and her younger brother outright and left her father a hollow, silent shadow of a man.  Faced with loss on such an incomprehensible scale, teenaged-Ace had gone off the rails.  She was – everyone knew – the kid at school that had a social worker.  The kid who'd started a fire that burned a building down.  The only reason she didn't get bullied was because the bullies had been unnerved by her.

The idea of game theory had appeared at just the right time in Ace's life.  Back then, the world had seemed a chaotic place.  Ace had found herself attracted to the idea that people's choices could be rendered predictable.  That there might be some way to make sense of things.

So she'd made a more thorough exploration of the subject.  It had been her own pet project.  She'd gone to the local library when the school's library hadn't offered much in the way of help.  She'd learned that you could apply game theory to all kinds of stuff, including economics and politics and biological evolution.  It was basically about how rational creatures looked at any choice as a pay-off between the damage it might cause them and the rewards they might gain.

Of course, all that had happened a long time ago, and in the years since O level Computer Studies she'd been kind of busy.  Time storms, survival on alien planets, and a merry-go-round of let's-save-the-world had kept her occupied.  It was years since Ace had last thought about game theory.  _Really_ thought about it.

And it was obvious why she was thinking about it now.  Her current emotional dilemma had left her crying out for guidance.  So Ace did as she had done when she'd been a confused and messed-up fourteen year old, and she went to the library – this time a much better one than the single-storey building just down from the canal in Perivale – and reminded herself of game theory's basics.

She read.  She discovered stuff she hadn't even known.  She made notes.

In taking this approach, Ace recognised that she was setting the Doctor up as a kind of opponent.  But what else could she do?  He was not given to openness and honesty.  His preferred strategy was to play dumb or change the subject whenever he encountered a situation he perceived as difficult.  When the difficulties ramped up, so did the intensity with which he responded.  A single blink, and he was no longer the crumpled professor with his bad puns and clownish tricks.  He became a roiling storm in humanoid form with darkly percipient eyes and the intimidating capacity to find cutting, insightful, dangerous words: words that could stop someone pulling the trigger; words that could stop them from wanting to draw breath.

( _'She's an emotional cripple...'_ )

He didn't show that kind of power often, but Ace knew it was there, hidden inside.  His strategies remained predictable, however, and Ace realised that game theory should allow her to navigate them, even counter them.

With these ideas, a plan began to form.

Premise: Ace needed to know more about how the Doctor was likely to react before she could decide whether to confess her feelings.

Hypothesis: it should be possible to direct conversations in which clues to the Doctor's potential reaction might be gleaned.

She would take a leaf from the Doctor's book and prepare soundly.  But she needed to do all this without playing her hand too soon.  She needed to be subtle.  Which was going to be tricky; subtlety had never been a strong point of hers.

It would be a little like chess.  She couldn't plan too far ahead because the permutations grew too numerous.  She had to plan just far enough.

Ace decided that she was better off ignoring the fact that the Doctor's prowess when it came to the game of chess was many orders of magnitude greater than her own.

~~~

The first step was to stop avoiding him.

She did it the usual way.

"Anything planned today?" she asked him, breezing into the console room and pretending she'd expected to find him there all along, even though part of her had wondered whether she'd be breezing into an empty room.

He looked at her.  He paused for just a moment, then he smiled amiably.  "I wondered about something stellar.  I'm rather in the mood for epic."

"Nursery or supernova?" Ace asked.

"Hmm.  My instincts tell me this is a day for starts, rather than ends," the Doctor said, possibly unaware of the double-meaning in his words.  (Though not very possibly.  He was alien, but he wasn't an idiot.)  "But that said – the ends are always so much more spectacular.  And I have a friend who enjoys an explosion."

Ace grinned.  It wasn't a pretend one; it was real.  And like that, they were friends.

The Doctor and Ace went to find themselves a nice red super-giant.

~~~

With things back on a more even keel, Ace allowed her plan to bubble and ferment.  Or maybe that was the wrong analogy; maybe it was maturing.  Maturing sounded good.  Like an expensive wine.  Or a really whiffy cheese.

Either way, she always seemed to have some ideas on the go in the back of her head.  Conversations, situations, implications.  Sometimes she started to worry that she was spending more time living in these hypotheticals than she was present in the real world.

In the end, there was nothing else for it.  She had to make a start.

She chose the library.  It was a room she'd never actually seen the Doctor leave.  Whenever he settled in there to read, or research, or plot, he'd be there for hours, sometimes days.  It was a room where he felt comfortable.  He'd be less likely to opt for defensive tactics in the library.

This decision made, it took a few more days before circumstances aligned to provide Ace with the context she sought.  She woke one morning and greeted the Doctor in their usual kitchen.  He poured her some tea from the teapot he had ready, nice and fresh.  She smiled and sat down.  The Doctor asked if she intended to have her usual swim.  She said yes, wondering if he had a new destination lined up.  But he just nodded and told her he'd probably be in the library for much of the day.

And with that, Ace's game-theory plan stopped being a nice, safe, intellectual exercise involving bullet-pointed notes and flow charts and matrices filled with percentage values.  Instead, it became a dangerous reality.

Ace had to force herself to stick to her routine.  She swam ten lengths of the pool, all the while impatient to get to the library and put her plan to the test.  She considered getting out, but experienced a wave of stomach-churning nerves.  She then found herself swimming another ten lengths, almost as if she wanted to put off the moment when she next faced the Doctor.

In the end she had to stop, because she'd quickened her stroke from the steady, length-swallowing crawl she usually employed into a surging, effort-intensive sprint.  At the shallow end she tore her goggles from her head.  She floated on her back, staring at the rippling patterns of reflected light on the ceiling, listening to her breathing and her heart rate calm.

"Fuck it," she growled between pants.  "Things were fine before this.  Just abso-fucking-lutely fucking fine."

The light on the ceiling rippled sympathetically, as if it were trying to calm her down.

"I didn't ask for anything to change," she added.  "Why the fuck did this have to happen?"

The ceiling didn't offer an answer.

She swam two more slow lengths to warm down, then got out.  She showered and washed her hair, then she wondered about using the sonic to get rid of the faint scent of chlorine still on her skin.  She decided not to bother.  This was not about seduction.  If the Doctor could show any kind of interest in her beyond that of travelling companion, it would have to be for the Ace she already was, not one she could become to suit his preferences.

She got dressed, grabbed some toast in the kitchen – the Doctor had left her two thick slices from the loaf, ready to go – and then walked the short distance to the library.

~~~

The TARDIS library could seem cavernous in places, claustrophobic in others.  In its wide open spaces – cathedral-sized halls lined with bookshelves which required floating platforms to get you to the top – you could shout your name and count the echoes.  In its alcoves, and in the labyrinth of passageways formed by shelves filled with parchment and paper, stone-bound and wood-bound and leather-bound volumes, data-crystal and memory-card and dozens of other types of media that Ace had yet to identify, you could hide yourself away indefinitely.

The Doctor's preferred place of work in the library was the space just inside its tall double-doors: the homely part that looked like a Victorian parlour.  An ever-flickering fire in a granite-worked hearth gave the impression of an English winter outside the doors.  It was furnished with Chesterfield armchairs, rosewood and mahogany occasional tables inlaid with satinwood, and – of course – the Doctor's expansive oak desk.  The room had wood-panelled walls, and was rich with the smell of old paper and beeswax and the hint of cedar.  It was a space that suited the Doctor down to the ground.

Ace paused after entering.  Her eyes needed a moment to adjust to the lighting: outside in the TARDIS passageways the light was white and utilitarian, but inside the library the lights were yellower and came from sources that were directed rather than overhead.  The Doctor glanced up from his desk and smiled at her in amiable acknowledgement.  This was good.  If he'd been absorbed in his work he might have gone hours without noticing her presence.

She swallowed, then managed, "Hiya.  Thought I'd have a read."  Which was a fairly redundant statement to make when entering a library, but there it was.  She made herself scarce, heading through the arch and into the library proper.  She grabbed the first paperback she found in the 20th century Earth section which had an interesting cover.

She took her book to the fireplace room and settled in with it.  It was by someone called Beryl Bainbridge.  Ace wondered whether she'd be able to do more than read the first couple of lines, over and over.

All was quiet for a while.

Ace managed to read a few chapters and was grateful for the means to pass the time.  Then she got restless.  She shuffled, uncomfortable on her usually comfortable armchair with her legs draped over one of the arms.  She sighed and put the book down in her lap and glanced over to the Doctor's desk.

He was sitting back in his chair, head resting against the soft leather, hands neatly folded across his chest, and he was looking at her.  An expression of infinite patience had settled on his so-often impatient features.  He appeared to be waiting.

Ace felt she'd been wrong-footed from the very start.  Still, in for a penny...she decided to take the plunge anyway.

"I need to talk to you," she said.

"So I gather," he replied.

"It's important."

"Yes?"

"And it might be awkward."

"Ah."

Ace paused a moment: just long enough for the overwhelming urge to cut the crap and forget the game theory, and to simply come out and say it – _I love you.  I want you.  Don't hate me for feeling that way_ – to fade.

Then she said, "We talked.  After Fenric.  About how you weren't going to keep secrets from me again."

The Doctor let out a slow breath, then he looked down at his desk.  "Yes."

"But there were things you didn't tell me about Colonis.  Important things."

He squeezed at the bridge of his nose.  Clearly he didn't want to have this conversation, but he couldn't turn his back on it: not without being dismissive about an ancient hurt that had come close to destroying their friendship.  He lifted his gaze and dropped his hand and gave her a small nod.

Now she'd got him to engage, there was no point in beating around the bush.  The longer she took to get to the point, the longer the Doctor would have to strategise an exit.  So she said: "You knew about Carson."

"No," the Doctor said immediately.  Then, more slowly, "No, I didn't.  I suspected."  He shook his head.  "But like I said to you before, I had to let you make your own decisions.  Even if..."  He frowned, looked away.  "Even if, ultimately, it was to cost me your companionship."

Ace nodded.  "That can't have been easy."

"It wasn't."  He peered at her intently, as if looking for a sign that she understood.  "If I'd influenced your choice – any of your choices – I could have done a lot of damage."

"I get that."

"And if I'd told you of my fear for how things would–"

"I know!  I'm not stupid.  We already did that conversation.  That's not what this is about."

The Doctor blinked, surprised.  Perhaps he'd been expecting an earful.  "Then what is it about?"

"Yeah, this is the awkward part," she said.  "And I wouldn't say anything, only it's been more than a month and none of this stuff is going away.  And here we are, just the two of us.  Who am I s'posed to talk to?"

The Doctor leapt at the opening.  "Is there somewhere you want me to take you?  Someone you'd like to visit?"

Ace snorted derisively and went to block his move.  "Like who?  My mother?  No thanks."

"You still have friends–"

"I've had two friends in my entire life who I trusted with private stuff.  One of them got murdered when she was thirteen.  The other one is you."

She watched the Doctor weigh the risks and rewards, and again, reluctantly, ignore the option for evasion.

"You'd better tell me the awkward part," the Doctor invited, without any enthusiasm.

"Please don't mock me," Ace said, knowing that this was the last thing the Doctor intended, but wanting to emphasise her vulnerability.  It would make him feel stronger.

"Well of course not."

"Okay then."  She sighed.  "Professor – is there something wrong with me?"

He waited.  She didn't clarify.  She'd planned to leave some of her comments vague, in the hope that he'd make assumptions, let something slip, give her some clue as to the direction of his thoughts.  But the Doctor didn't take the bait.  "I don't follow."

So she clarified.  "Look at my history.  Not really a list of great romantic choices, is it?"

"Oh.  Um.  I don't–"

"I mean, Mike the fascist!  Remember him?"  She kept talking, allowing the Doctor to deal with the panic that had become apparent in his eyes.  "Sorin was a nice enough guy, I suppose – right up until he turned into the vessel of evil."

"Ace–"

"No, I mean, what is it with me?"  _Don't think about Glitz.  Don't think about it.  It never mattered._ "Remember that guy Leon?  The medic on the hospital ship in the Devoral Space Fleet?  It was just after Fenric, when you and me were still kind of..."  She let the words trail off, because she didn't want to overplay the Fenric card.  "Leon Pasternak, that was his name.  One night with him, and at three in the morning there's a knock at the door and he gets up and starts dealing morphine to some junkie.  I slept with a drug dealer!"

"I don't know what you want me to say."  The Doctor's panic wasn't abating.

"I don't either!"  She kicked her legs up and spun around in the armchair to sit more conventionally.  "I just – look, if there's something wrong with me, I need to know.  I need to fix it.  Because at the moment I seem to be a magnet for bad guys.  And I refuse – I just bloody _refuse_ – to be that woman."

The Doctor cleared his throat.  "I suppose the situations we encounter, they aren't always conducive to finding, er, Mr. Right."

Ace snorted another humourless laugh.  "I'm not looking for Mr. Right."  Could she risk a little?  Yes, she decided she could: no pain, no gain.  "Already found him, anyway.  If 'Mr. Right' means the one man who has my trust and my loyalty and all that stuff?  That's you, okay?  You."  She moved on.  She didn't want to be too obvious.  "But it'd be nice to have some fun with a bloke who doesn't turn out to be a villain."

"You're dwelling on the negative," the Doctor said.  "The young man at Woodstock was nice enough, wasn't he?"

"Exception that proves the rule," Ace grumped.

"No, he was an exception that proves your choices aren't always poor ones."

"But you acknowledge they are a lot of the time?"

"I think you've been unlucky," the Doctor said.  "You can't blame yourself for the failings of others."

"Maybe I could say that if it happened once.  Even twice.  But I'm in a scary holding pattern.  You want to know the stats?  Seventy-six point four seven per cent.  That's how many of the people who've shown an interest in me in the last four years have turned out to be bad guys.  That's more than three quarters of them!  Seriously, I'm on the verge of committing to a lifetime of celibacy, here."

There was a pause.  Ace begged the Doctor to make a comment.  Maybe: 'You deserve better.  How about me?'  Or: 'Yes, celibacy sounds good.  Then I won't have to watch you flirting with other men.'  God, even something like, 'You're asking the wrong person.  I've been happily celibate for all seven of my lives.'  Even _that_ would be information she could use.

He didn't say anything.

"Look, I'm not blaming you, don't get me wrong," Ace said.  "I take responsibility for my own decisions.  Even the really bad ones.  I'm just saying.  Benefit of hindsight?  I really wish I hadn't slept with Carson."

The Doctor frowned down at his desk.  "I did my best to demonstrate my disapproval."

"Yeah, well, it got mixed up in all your other disapprovals."  She rolled her eyes.  "You got in a right strop, back there."

"Yes, funny, that," he bit.  "Almost as if I was beside myself with worry for the safety of my friend!"

Ace sighed.  "I know.  I'm not saying you didn't have stuff on your mind.  I'm just saying – it wasn't enough.  Your disapproval.  To steer me clear of Carson."

"What should I have done, then?" he asked.  He was growing angry, and Ace wasn't sure whether it was because he was ramping up his own game theory strategies, or overcompensating for the panic, or he was genuinely pissed off.  "Your amorous predilections are–"

"Are not 'predilections'!" Ace interrupted, finishing his sentence.  "God!  You think I go looking for partners because I like one-night stands?  A bloke on every planet, love 'em and leave 'em?  No!  This is not about what I _like_.  It's about what I _have_ to do, because I don't have a choice."

The Doctor shook his head, bewildered.  "I don't underst–"

"No, you don't.  I know you don't.  And I know you don't really want me to explain, either."  Ace rubbed her eyes.  She'd lost control of the conversation because she'd lost her temper, but the opportunity had arisen to tell the Doctor something important, and she took it.  "It's not about sex," she said.  "I mean, sex is fun.  I like sex.  But I could manage without.  It isn't what I need."  She paused, but the Doctor was not feeling comfortable enough to prompt her, so she finished the point on her own.  "What I need is intimacy."  She pinched her lips.  "Feeling close – physically close – to someone, every now and then.  Sex is an easy way to get that.  People you've only just met – they get freaked out if you invite them to spend half an hour snuggling."

The Doctor looked sad and old.  "Oh, Ace."

"Look, it's no big deal, right?  The way I grew up, I can make a tiny scrap of affection last me for months."  She smiled in reminiscence.  "Manisha's mum.  She always gave me a really big hug when I went round for tea.  Like she knew I didn't get them anywhere else."  She shrugged off the way she'd managed to sidetrack herself.  "Sorry.  Not what this is about.  Professor – I _love_ this life, here, with you.  I wouldn't change it.  Not for anything.  But it comes with a price.  I never get to stay anywhere long enough to make a real friend.  Or start a romance.  All I ever have time for is the odd one-night stand.  And that's fine.  I can live with that.  But I need your help.  I need to make better choices."  She looked his way, quietly imploring him to understand.  "Do you get what I'm asking you, here?"

"But that's just the point," he said.  "It isn't up to me–"

"Don't you even care?" she asked.  Vaguely.  Leaving him to interpret whether she was asking if he cared about her in general or if he gave a damn who she slept with.

"Of course I care," he said, just as vaguely.  "But I don't have the right to intrude."

She'd anticipated this.  She already had her response.

"Maybe you don't."  Ace drew a deep breath.  "So you know what?  I'm giving you the right.  No – no, actually, I'm asking you to _accept_ the right.  If you really do care.  As a favour to me.  Next time I start making eyes at some bloke who might be on the unsavoury side?  Feel free to stop me.  Protect me from myself."

"It wouldn't be–"

"This is about trust, Professor.  I don't trust myself right now.  Not in those kinds of choices.  But I do trust you.  So please.  Keep an eye out for me?"

He considered for a moment.  "If I believe there is a genuine reason to steer you away from any given individual, I'll do so.  But please don't forget, Ace – you have a stubborn streak.  You react badly when told you may not do something."

"So we'll give it a code word.  Call it...call it an 'intervention'.  If you use that word, I'll know it's serious.  If you don't, I'll know you're just being a grumpy old git and I can ignore you like usual."

"And it doesn't concern you that I might misuse this mechanism?"

Ooh.  Interesting.  If she squinted, the Doctor was implying that he'd relish the chance to nix her love life.  Ace hugged the tiny hint to herself, because it would probably keep her going for weeks.

She said, simply, "Told you.  I trust you."

He smiled at that.  "Very well.  But I would reiterate that I do not believe there's anything wrong with you at all."

Ace nodded.  "Thanks for letting me talk."  She turned back to her book and pretended to read, giving the Doctor the opportunity to set the conversation aside and get back to work.

She had to be fairly pleased with the discussion, right?  She'd achieved what she'd been hoping to achieve with this opening gambit: she'd reminded the Doctor that intimacy was necessary in her life, bemoaned the fact that most of her sexual partners to date had been lacking, and ensured that the Doctor would be paying more attention to her love-life in future.  And she'd managed all that without betraying her longings and imploding their relationship.

King's pawn to e4.  A good opening.  Nothing had really happened yet, but it was an important step towards taking control of the centre of the board.

It seemed like a good morning's work.

~~~

This sense of progress, alas, didn't last for long.

The problem was the limit to what Ace could risk revealing in conversation.  She could only go so far, leaving the rest to hints and suggestions.  The Doctor – almost as if he'd caught the scent of Ace's game theory strategy and was deploying countermeasures – was able to dismiss and evade such things with ease.

She constantly hit the buffers.  Every time she thought she'd found a chink in the Doctor's emotional armour it turned out to have been a trick of the light.

After several weeks and a dozen or so aborted conversational attempts at forcing the Doctor's hand, Ace knew she'd reached the stage where she needed a different strategy.  Or an additional one: something else to focus on so she could give the tricksy-talks a rest.  God, what she really needed was some answers.  Just the basic stuff would do!

Most obviously: do Time Lords even _do_ romance?

Not the kind of thing she could come out and ask, so she went to the TARDIS databanks.  There was a huge amount of material about Gallifrey in there: political stuff, historical stuff.  Geography, certainly; mathematical theory by the shitload.  She found so many sets of laboriously documented protocols for administration systems, hierarchical academia and hundreds of associated ceremonies that Ace suspected the Time Lords of having way too much time on their hands.  Hence the name, perhaps.

She found musical recordings that were barely listenable, and some of the worst poetry she'd ever read.  She found an expansive diagram of the various councils and how they related to the traditional Gallifreyan Houses and Academies.  All semi-interesting, if she squinted.

But was there a breakdown of Gallifreyan biology?  Or a handy diagram of a naked Gallifreyan male?

Of course there wasn't.

After days of staring bleary-eyed at the data-screens in the library, Ace had to admit that she was none the wiser.  She might be able to name the four main Gallifreyan Academies and their associated Houses, and even identify the status of any given scholar by their robe-colour and the shape and size of their collar.  But really useful information had eluded her completely.

She needed a better plan.  She needed a way to find out how Gallifreyans related to each other on a personal level.

Where would she find out about that?

She turned the problem on its head.  If she were a non-human, eager to learn how human beings related to each other, what could she do?

Okay, so she'd sit on a park bench and watch.  Or in a pub, or restaurant, or any number of public spaces.  It wouldn't take long to notice all sorts of human interactions: arguments, banter, affection, jealousy, flirtation, whatever.

But that didn't help.  Gallifrey was inaccessible to her.  So if she assumed that direct observation was not possible, what then?

Ace reckoned that the answer would be to somehow _indirectly_ observe.

The solution struck her so swiftly that she was embarrassed she hadn't cottoned on earlier.  Ace hit the library's data-screens again, this time with popular culture on her mind.

~~~

Three days later, Operation: Gallifreyan Romance was still rapidly going nowhere.  By this point, Ace was so irritated by her lack of progress that she felt compelled to do the one thing she'd been trying to avoid: she asked the Doctor about it.

She introduced the subject when they were working together in the console room.  "You like movies, don't you, Professor?" she asked as she completed the task he'd given her, recalibrating the dimensional stabilisers.

The Doctor was visible only as a pair of legs which stuck out from beneath the console.  "Hmm?" was his response.

"Movies."

"Something you want to see?  If you want me to take you to see _Star Wars_ on its opening weekend we'll have to be careful.  There's two of me there already."

"No, nothing like that."  Ace frowned at the read-out on her multimeter until its figures responded to the tweaks she made with her stylus at the crystalline input sockets.  "But you do like them?  I mean, you cried during _The Elephant Man_."

"It was sad!" the Doctor said indignantly.

"Not saying it wasn't.  I cried too."

"You said you had hay fever," he reminded her.

"I don't get hay fever."

"I know."

Ace grinned, then frowned, realising she'd been sidetracked.  "Is there a reason you're avoiding my question?"

"What was the question?"

She rolled her eyes.  "Do you like films?"

"Oh.  Um, yes, I've seen some films that were very enjoyable.  Why do you ask?"

Ace, satisfied with the responses of the current input socket, moved her stylus down to the next and reset the multimeter.  "Because I've been searching the databanks for the Gallifreyan version of a movie, and I've come up with nothing."

The Doctor's knees bent as he shuffled his way out from under the console.  When his face came into view, slightly flushed, hair wild against the white of the floor, he stopped.  "Gallifrey doesn't have films.  Not in the way Earth does."

"Why not?"

He thought for a moment.  "Fictional entertainment is considered frivolous on Gallifrey.  There are a few examples of epic poetry–"

"Saw them.  Didn't know whether to laugh or cry."

"Hmm, fair comment.  But imagination is rather frowned upon on my home planet.  If you absolutely must be imaginative, it's preferred you direct your talents towards mathematics and engineering."

It was, it seemed, as she'd thought: no Gallifreyan movies in the databanks because they didn't exist.  Which in turn did not bode well for the average Gallifreyan's capacity for romance, even in the word's broadest sense.  Ace tried to shrug off her disappointment and carried on working.  The Doctor stood up, wandered across to her and looked over her shoulder, pretending she needed checking up on.  She sensed him hovering and ignored him; they both knew that she oversaw the calibration work these days because she had a better instinct for it than the Doctor.  He wasn't good at the methodical jobs.  He got bored too easily.

Eventually the Doctor went to the other side of the console to check the results of his work on the fault locator.  "Why were you looking?" he asked.

"Hmm?" she responded, because she loved it when she got the opportunity to play him at his own game.

"The Gallifreyan version of films?"

"Ah.  Just interested."

"Why?"

Ace hid a grin, glad that she'd reached the last input socket and had an excuse to be bending low enough to hide behind the console.  "I'm interested in everything," she declared, remembering herself enough not to roll the 'r's and give the tease away.

There was a pause.  Ace wished she could risk a peek to see if the Doctor was annoyed or amused by the way she'd used one of his stock-phrases to evade his question.  But peeking would spoil it if she was caught.  And she'd inevitably be caught.

Just as she was thinking, _'One-nil to the mere mortals,'_ the Doctor found a reply.

"Good!  Excellent attitude to have.  There's some temporal mathematics I always found particularly elegant in my Prydonian days.  I could spend some time showing you, later."

Bastard.  He'd rumbled her.  Ace popped her head up above the console and found the Doctor leaning on the other side, chin in his hands, waiting for her to appear.  He was wearing his poker face.

"Fine," she growled.  _'One apiece, then.'_   "'Everything' might have been an overstatement.  But I am interested in Gallifrey."

"Why?"

He sounded just like a toddler with his constant why-ing.  But he deserved an answer.  A half-truth, anyway.

"Because _you're_ from Gallifrey.  Because we've travelled together for four years and you've drip-fed me the tiniest details about your home planet.  Usually by accident, when you let your guard down, because when I ask you things you get defensive.  Like this."

"Gallifrey isn't that interesting," he said, frowning about the accusation but not, Ace noted, arguing with it.

Ace set her stylus and multimeter down, blew hair from her eyes and stretched her back.  "So tell me all about it and let me make up my own mind."

The Doctor stood up straight.  "I don't see the point."

"Really?"  She leaned over the console and tapped a couple of switches, bringing the dimensional stabilisers out of 'test' mode and fully on-line.  A row of lights offered her a sweep of green, and the TARDIS seemed to add a brief rumble of pleasure to her thrum.  Ace patted the console and went over to her toolkit to stow the devices she'd been using.  "I thought you wanted me to learn things.  Expand my horizons."

"I do."

"But not about Gallifrey?"

"There are areas where your energies would be better directed.  You should make the most of my experience.  I can guide your learning–"

"Let me get this straight.  You want me to be curious, but only about the things you deem worthy?"

"This isn't about repression!  I've your best interests at heart!"

"Think that's what Goebbels said to the German people when he controlled the media?"

The Doctor spluttered.  "You're calling me a _Nazi_?"

She grinned.  "Well obviously not, you big 'nana.  I think I know you that well, at least."  She moved around the console towards him.  "I'm just saying there's dangerous precedents when it comes to telling people what they may or may not ask questions about."

He narrowed his eyes at her and then huffed a sigh.  She'd won the debate.  _'Two-one, perhaps?'_

"You were a lot less annoying," he told her, "when you were sixteen."

Just the barest of pauses, as memories of Colonis intruded.  "Yeah, well, we've established I'm not sixteen any more," she said, watching him carefully, wondering whether she was going mad to be placing such importance on throwaway comments.

Another very slight pause.  The Doctor shifted his weight from one foot to another.  Then:

"You were more easily distracted."

"Well, I s'pose that's true.  But when it comes to being annoying, I like to think I've achieved a certain consistency over the years."  The Doctor allowed himself a small smile of what looked like affection.  "You're just cross because I won the argument."

"We were arguing?"

"Yes, and I won."

"Only by calling me Goebbels."

"Only because you made it fit."

He held up his hands in mock surrender.  "Fine!  I'm a fascist and you won the argument.  Shall I goose-step for you?"

But she wasn't to be sidetracked this time.  "Just tell me about Gallifrey."

The Doctor heaved a big, world-weary sigh.  "What do you want to know?"

"Okay.  So.  If your lot don't make movies or telly, then what do you do of an evening?"

"We do have our version of television.  News coverage.  Reports on council meetings, ceremonies.  Aside from that, we talk.  Walk.  Write.  Read.  Research.  Experiment."

"So you never stop working?"

"For most, work is pleasure."

"But when you need to unwind?"

The Doctor started to look irritated.  "A glass of wine and a talk with a friend?  A walk through the layered gardens?  A good book?"

"Fictional book?"

"Hmm...unlikely."

"So a good maintenance manual, then?"

"A book can still be read for pleasure, even when it isn't made up.  History.  Biography."  The Doctor cast about.  "Botany?"

"So how come you know so much Earth literature?  How come you can quote Shakespeare and Dickens and Wilde and-and Dostoyevsky and Mark Twain and Stephen King and–"

"Because I'm unusual!"

This, Ace considered, might be important.  Gallifreyan rom-coms may not exist, but the point was that the Doctor had denounced the Gallifreyan lifestyle and gone looking for something else.  He liked movies.  He liked literature.  He had that capacity for romance, even if only in the imaginative and heroic sense of the word.

"Okay then," she said.  "Different question.  If you were still on Gallifrey, what would _you_ do of an evening?"

The Doctor's eyebrows lifted, and the gesture seemed helpless.  "Probably try to steal a TARDIS and make my escape."

"Was it really so bad?" she asked.

"It was...stultifying."

"Were you the only one who felt like that?"

"How do you mean?"

"You must have had friends.  Family."  _Or a girlfriend or a boyfriend_ , Ace made sure she didn't add.  "People to talk to about the way you felt."

"Yes, well, we don't tend to talk about how we, er, feel, on Gallifrey."

Interesting.  They didn't talk about feelings, but the Doctor wasn't denying their existence.

"How did you cope, then?" she pressed.  "I mean, when I feel strongly about something I need to know that others feel the same way."

"I didn't really think about it.  Not at the time.  It was unusual for a Gallifreyan to feel strongly about anything."  The Doctor shrugged.  "But there were a few of my peers at the academy who also wanted to experience more than Gallifrey had to offer."

"Like the Master."

"Yes."  The smallest prick of a frown between his eyes.  "And others."

It was an odd notion: Gallifreyan teen rebels, smothered by the formality of their restrictive society, desperate for some means to escape and experience more.  Ace was struck by a thought which made her smile.  When she and Julian and Shreela had been pissed off with Perivale, they'd tried to form a band.  She'd bought a bass guitar for twenty quid off Ange's brother who needed the money for uni, and Shreela had been on vocals, and Julian on keyboards, and they'd written what they thought were protest songs, angry-young-person songs, anti-establishment, anti-everything.  She could still see them now, fifteen years old, in Julian's garage (him being the only one of them whose parents lived in a house big enough to have a garage).  Making the most god-awful din.

And now she was seeing the Master, bent over keyboards, playing chords over a synthetic drumbeat as the Doctor took the mic and belted out a song about being trapped in Nowheresville, Gallifrey...

"What's so funny?" his voice demanded, cutting through the vision.

Ace smirked at the Doctor.  "You.  As Billy Bragg, backed by evil-Kraftwerk."

"What?"

"Doesn't matter.  Is this why you didn't want me to ask about Gallifrey?  Because the memories are unhappy?"

"Not unhappy.  Uninteresting."

Ace sighed.  "Speak for yourself, Professor.  Personally I'm fascinated.  But you deserve a break after that, so I'm going to put the kettle on and I promise not to ask any more awkward questions."  She turned and walked around to the internal door of the console room.  "Not today, anyway," she called over her shoulder.

The Doctor let out a theatrical groan of disgust.  Ace ignored him.  The conversation had offered a new way forward in her investigation, and the idea was intriguing.  Because the fact of the matter was that the Doctor wasn't Gallifreyan enough for that culture and its attitudes to define him.  But he wasn't human either.  Basically, he defied all the archetypes.

So.  Gallifrey didn't do romantic fiction or films.

What did the Doctor do?

~~~~~~


End file.
